Cressida Dick was one of the UK’s most senior female police officers before she left Scotland Yard to take up a highly sensitive security-related post within the Foreign Office in 2014.
However, her return to lead the country’s biggest police force in 2017 was not without controversy.
In 2005, she was the officer in charge of the flawed operation which lead to the death of a young Brazilian man, Jean Charles de Menezes. He was mistaken by a suicide bomber and shot dead by armed police while on the London Underground.
The force came under fire in March 2021 following the murder of Sarah Everard by a serving police officer. Wayne Couzens, who was later sentenced to a whole life order, used his position as an officer to lure the marketing officer to her death. The Met were also criticised for their heavy-handed policing of a vigil in Miss Everard’s memory.
In June 2021, a long-awaited report into the axe murder of a private detective accused the force of “institutional corruption”. An independent panel examining the unsolved killing of father-of-two Daniel Morgan in a pub car park found “multiple very significant failings” during the initial Met Police investigation.
In December 2021, an inquest into the deaths of four victims of serial killer Stephen Port found Met Police mistakes “probably” contributed to the deaths, with officers missing repeated opportunities to catch Port in 2014.
In February 2022, the police watchdog condemned Scotland Yard officers for bad behaviours that included racism, misogyny, harassment and offensive social media messages. The investigation was initially launched following a complaint an officer had sex with a drunk person in a police station, but later uncovered so much more.
The force has also been accused of acting too late investigating alleged lockdown-breaking parties held at Number 10 Downing Street.
https://news.sky.com/story/boris-johnson-news-live-reshuffle-rees-mogg-starmer-savile-12514080
